Posts Tagged ‘Iowa Pizza’

How do you live in a place and not know there’s a “special dish” out there that everybody raves about? Apparently, it’s not that hard. I lived in the Quad Cities for two years and choked down Little Caesar’s and a local Happy Joe’s pizza regularly, but nobody ever let me in on this secret.

I spent so much time eating in a bar there, they named a sandwich after me. As with most things in my life, the bar burned down a few years later.

There is, and has been for years and years, a “Quad Cities Style” pizza. What makes it different? The crust has a “nutty” taste to it, the sauce is spicy, all toppings are under the cheese, and most of all, the pie is cut in STRIPS, not slices or squares (which is called “tavern style” in Chicago).

One of the largest, oldest purveyors of these unique delights is Harris Pizza, which multiple locations throughout the Quad Cities.

Did I explain what the Quad Cities are? Four adjacent cities straddling the Mississippi River on the Iowa/Illinois. Home of John Deere. That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Oh, and outside of Davenport, is a small town named Walcott, home of the world’s largest truck stop, right there on I-80, the main street of America. Be sure to check out the annual “Truckers Jamboree” in July where they whip up some very fine BBQ thick thick thick pork chops.

So anyway, I was blasting through the Quad Cities, and decided to partake of their specialty, got a sausage pie to go, as I was stopping for the night an hour down the road and I could examine and digest the pie at my leisure.

Which I did. And enjoyed it immensely. The sauce is zesty, the cheese melty, the sausage was terrific. The “strips” were a little disarming, but I prevailed.